Sailing to the silver screen on the waves it made on Broadway, A Streetcar Named Desire is the big screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Arriving in New Orleans on the titular streetcar, high-school teacher Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) takes refuge at her sister Stella’s (Kim Hunter) apartment, claiming to be on leave for anxiety. Reserved and sensitive, Blanche’s presence is met with snideness and suspicion by Stella’s rambunctious husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando). When she hits it off with Stanley’s better-behaved friend Mitch (Karl Malden), things begin to look up for Blanche despite the unit’s dysfunctional harmony always teetering closer to the edge of oblivion when Stanley’s drunken temper flares.

The film that introduced the world to Marlon Brando and won Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden Academy Awards for their turns (the first film to ever win in three of the acting categories – it also took home Best Art Direction), Elia Kazan’s translation of his Broadway success to cinema retains all of the volatile emotion of the stage, bolstered by stark black-and-white photography, dynamic camerawork and sharp montage. While stage on screen remains a divisive subject, A Streetcar Named Desire unequivocally bridges the mediums to their respective strengths – one is seldom bothered by ‘staginess’ with writing, performance and direction as keen as this.